


Scenes from an Italian Restaurant

by simplecoffee



Category: The Fugitive (Movies)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 02:40:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17051519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplecoffee/pseuds/simplecoffee
Summary: Sam and Richard talk fashion, and other things.





	Scenes from an Italian Restaurant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plumedy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/gifts).



Gerard is there at his acquittal.  
  
He's instrumental in it, actually. The other marshals give evidence, as do a string of doctors from Memorial and County, but it's his calm frankness the jury swings on, and then that afternoon Richard is free. Except now he's got no mooring left but the Devlin MacGregor trial to face, and an empty apartment to go back to, and it doesn't much feel like freedom at all.  
  
Walter thumps him on the shoulder and leaves, shuffling papers for the press to read, and Richard drifts toward the exit and tries to pull himself together. He pauses in the hallway, steeling himself for the flashbulbs, and takes a moment to close his eyes.  
  
He feels a presence beside him before he hears the voice.  
  
"You okay?" it says kindly.  
  
Richard opens his eyes, and is surprised to find himself smiling.   
  
"Hello, Marshal," he says, and Gerard smiles back. He looks just as collected as ever, all crisp and impeccable blue suit and tie, but there's a warmth to him regardless of his piercing gaze.  
  
"It's all the TV crews, isn't it," he says unexpectedly, and Richard blinks. "Wanna sneak out the back way and not have to pass 'em?"  
  
"Wait, there's a back way?"  
  
He grins. "Sure there is. I'll show ya."  
  
He's as good as his word, too; there's not a soul at the back of the building. Richard squints in astonishment and the afternoon sun, and promptly realizes he'll have to cross the press line anyway to get to his car.  
  
"Pick it up some other time," Gerard says. "Mine's right here; I'll drive you home."  
  
At this point, Richard figures he might as well; no more looking gift horses in the mouth. Or, well, being silent and awkward; Kath has lectured him enough recently about not having friends.  
  
"'S kind of you to offer," he says, climbing in the passenger seat.  
  
"Eh," Gerard says. "I'm not the biggest fan of the press, either. And you've faced them down enough by now."  
  
"Thanks," Richard says, failing miserably at not being awkward. "This, uh...is the first time I've seen you in a suit, Marshal."  
  
Gerard laughs, low and pleasant. "And yourself, Doctor. Not like we've seen each other much of late, is it?"  
  
"Uh, or at all?"  
  
"Or at all. How've you been holding up?"  
  
Richard directs him to his new apartment in lieu of an answer.  
  
"Hey," he adds on a whim, "would you like to like to catch up over drinks tonight? You look like you need a break."  
  
Gerard looks startled. "Sure. I always need a break. - Okay, I'm kidding, I don't mean that, it's not  _that_  dire."  
  
Richard has to smile, again. "Figure I owe you one, anyway."  
  
" - oh,  _c'mon_ , no."  
  
"Not just for the ride," Richard tells him.  
  
"Yeah, I meant that too," he says. "But I would like to have that drink."

*

'Mildly dishevelled' turns out to be a look the marshal wears surprisingly well. He's traded in the dress shirt for a soft red sweater, jeans as blue and smile as bright as Richard remembers from that night in the car. They talk about everything and nothing much, current events, crossword puzzles, wine and gin and whiskey. It's a welcome change from his friends at Memorial; Gerard doesn't tiptoe around him like they still do, doesn't speak in tones too aware of tragedy, doesn't look at him and only see what's missing.  
  
"You're gonna have to start calling me Sam, you know that, right?" he says, and Richard thinks that maybe that's not such a bad idea after all.  
  
It's almost closing time when the bartender happens to address him as  _Dr Kimble_ , and Richard can't hide his involuntary wince. He'll never get used to being some kind of hero, to strangers believing they know his whole story; at least he won't be in the papers again till tomorrow morning.  
  
"All right, Richard, really," Gerard says as she moves away from their corner. "How are you holding up?"  
  
Richard looks at him and thinks of Chuck that night in the laundry room, and Helen, and Lentz, and Sykes, and the judge; thinks of taking a leap that should have killed him, and then a leap of faith that could have done the same. And then he blurts out, "D'you think I should regrow the beard?"  
  
Gerard barks an appreciative laugh.   
  
"Have people been askin' you that? You should tell 'em to mind their own damn business."   
  
"I mean," Richard says. "It's come up, you know? Friends. Like to say things. And I don't...I don't really know if they mean half of them."  
  
Gerard nods, suddenly serious, as though he's genuinely considering the question. "Well, Poole thought you looked good in it. Cosmo, too, actually."  
  
"Well, what do you think?"  
  
"I think it's not my place to say."  
  
"You're no fun," Richard says, surprising himself at the very thought of fun. "You've gotta have an opinion, come on."  
  
He shakes his head, still oddly grave. "It's not an opinion that'd matter. None of it's easy, Richard - rebuilding."  
  
The word stuns him, a little. "Rebuilding."  
  
"That's what this is, isn't it? That's what making that decision would be, one way or another."  
  
"Sam."  
  
"Richard," he says quietly. "About what you said this afternoon. I'd rather you not - look at it in terms of debt." He pauses, then goes on. "All I did was the right thing, and that can't right all the worlds of wrong done you. This is not about what's owed."  
  
Richard leaves the bar a few minutes after him, and wanders lost in thought awhile before going home.

*

A few weeks later, Sam leaves a message on his old answering machine.  
  
"Figured you might check there," he says when Richard asks. "Don't do that, by the way. If it's out of some sort of compulsion, or... Don't do it, Richard."  
  
"You could've pulled some strings and found out my new phone number," Richard points out.  
  
"True. And yet I didn't."  
  
Richard gives it to him.  
  
Sam chooses the place, this time - a pretty little cafe on the South Side. The man consumes entirely too much coffee, but Richard decides not to mention it yet.  
  
"I meant to ask," he says instead. "The marshal who was with you in the laundry room. Is he all right?"  
  
"Cosmo? He's fine. Pretty bad concussion at the time, but he's back in the field being a pain in my ass - sure he'd say I return the favour. Good of you to remember."  
  
"Of course I remember," Richard says. "I don't - really think about that night, if I can manage it. Doesn't mean I don't remember."  
  
"Yeah," Sam says, just a little too gentle, and nudges his coffee cup against Richard's when he can't make himself look up in reply. "Hey, you doin' okay?"  
  
"You were right, you know," Richard tells him, saying it before he loses his nerve. "About rebuilding. I'm seeing outpatients, and - I keep meaning to sell the house, but I can't face having to sort through it. Or, well, even step inside."  
  
"These things take time," Sam says. "Hell, talking about 'em takes time; it's a good first step. You think you'll go back to being a surgeon?"  
  
It's the one thing Richard's never questioned. "I will, quite soon. It's all I know."  
  
"A constant, huh? Routine. I guess that works - take your mind off things."  
  
Richard finally manages to make himself meet the other man's eyes.  
  
"That's decent advice, Marshal," he says, going for teasing, not sure he makes it. "Sure you still don't care?"  
  
Sam grins from behind his coffee cup. "Hey, I only meant that the first time."

*

It becomes a thing with them, those few hours together every few weeks; sometimes one or the other can't make it, and so they shuffle it around by a day or two. Sometimes it's dinner, sometimes coffee, sometimes drinks, and sometimes John Ellis from radiology is nice enough to give him two tickets to  _Witness for the Prosecution_ , and Kath is home with her wife and Chuck is gone and Helen is  _gone_  and Richard can't go alone, or face his apartment alone, and so he hesitantly asks Sam, and it turns out he needn't have worried because Sam says he'd be delighted.  
  
"Play's always better than the film," he says afterwards, drinking Irish coffee at the theater cafe. "I mean, there's only one feature film, and all of the plays are better than it."  
  
"I thought it might be...too much," Richard admits. "But it didn't really faze me at all."  
  
"It can be surprising," Sam says.  
  
"What, art?"  
  
"Well, I meant...the mind? But yes, also art. The stories that can demand to be told."  
  
"You have some way of putting things, Sam."  
  
He quirks an eyebrow. "I'm great at parties."  
  
"I bet you are, at that."  
  
"I'm  _really_  not," he says, mock-wincing, and grins.

*

Things do start to drift into some kind of normal. Richard goes back to playing tennis, gradually strengthening the knee he ruined; goes back to full-time surgeon duties, losing himself in the known and the true. And then he wakes up convinced he's in prison, convinced Helen's blood is still on his hands, spends the morning shaking so hard he has to call a last-minute switch at the hospital, and god, he's talked to Kath and seen psychologists and he's  _so tired_  of being looked at like he's a ghost, as though he's going to fall apart, even on the days when that might be true. So he tries to stop second-guessing himself, takes a breath, and calls Sam.  
  
"I dream, sometimes," he tells him that evening, eating ice cream by the lake because...why not. Sam likes to ask why not. "I thought - it might end, that the other shoe had...fallen. Fallen enough. But it's never done."  
  
They're silent for some time, watching the waves. Helen loved the lake, but it's easy to love; there's peace and strife and tranquility, and pain, all here. Richard grew up in and around the water; Sam, he knows, doesn't have those memories. Maybe that's what makes this a little bit easier. Maybe it's that he seems to understand, anyway.  
  
"It's not even like I'm just back there," Richard says, letting the wind draw the words from his mouth. "It's all different. Every time's different."  
  
"Richard," Sam says quietly. "I can't tell you it will ever stop hurting. But it does get better. It fades with time. I can promise you that much."  
  
Richard says, bitterly, "I hate that I believe you."  
  
When Sam squeezes his shoulder, he doesn't flinch away.

*

Some days it's easy to forget that Sam comes from a vastly different world than his. Those are the laid-back evenings, like the first, when he shows up in flight jackets, softer fabrics, brighter reds, listens happily to Richard's often too-detailed medical talk. Other days, his charm is quicker, darker, suit jacket and tie as clean-cut as his words, his attention a presence all its own, and Richard remembers why he once feared him.   
  
Knowing him better, it must be said, helps.   
  
"That's a table full of cops," Sam says, following his gaze to the loudest patrons at the restaurant. "And that one, behind them off to the side, is also a cop, but from out of state. If they're all celebrating, and this ain't a normal Friday night, I hope I don't hear some bureaucratic bullshit about 'em tomorrow."  
  
"Think they've clocked you?" Richard says.  
  
"Oh, for sure. Some of them know me by sight - the others think I'm military, maybe FBI."  
  
"How d'you figure that?"  
  
"Experience, mostly. I don't read as a cop; I'm not hollerin' at the waiters, for one." There's a glint of amusement in his eyes. "I'm also not wearing steel-toed shoes. Check 'em out."   
  
He's right, of course, and it's the most he's ever said about work at a time.  
  
"I'm _also_ not carrying my weapon off-duty," he adds with uncharacteristic vehemence, and Richard wonders for a moment what exactly he's been dealing with today.  
  
"You do like donuts, though," he says without thinking, and immediately rolls his eyes at himself, surprised when Sam actually brightens in answer.  
  
"Well, now that's a secret of mine that you know and they don't, Richard. Savour it."  
  
And then he grins, dramatically knocks their sandwiches together and calls it a  _toast_ , and Richard laughs until he cries.  
  
This time, while they're leaving, Sam pulls him into a hug. Richard freezes solid for a second or two before he realizes he can move his arms to hold him in return.  
  
"You sure you're okay?" Sam says softly in his ear.  
  
"Think I'm getting there," Richard says, and thinks he means it.

*

He finds Sam in the smoking section of the diner, halfway through a cigarette and a cup of strong coffee.  
  
"I didn't know you smoked," he tells him.  
  
"I don't," Sam says, and takes a drag. "You gonna give me the cardiac health talk?"  
  
"You gonna listen?" Richard says.  
  
"No," Sam says with a sigh, but it's quiet, regretful, an apology. "Not today."  
  
"Hey, what's wrong?"  
  
Sam takes a breath, holds it, exhales.  
  
"You know," he says, "I really wish I could tell you all of it. Think you'd appreciate it."  
  
Richard waits.  
  
"One of my kids got hurt," he adds. "Not badly, she'll be fine, but - "  
  
"- uh, you have kids?"  
  
Sam blinks. " - Oh. My team, you've met 'em. Biggs, Poole, Henry, Newman, Cosmo - that's the kids. Poole got knifed - well, it's barely a scratch, it's the job, these things happen. Still kinda throws you when they do."  
  
"You said, the other day," Richard says slowly, voicing a thought he's had for a while. "Well, some time ago. Quite some time ago. That all you did for me was the right thing."  
  
Sam stubs out his cigarette, lifts his coffee mug to press it briefly to his forehead. "Well, that is my job, arguably."  
  
"Arguably."  
  
"Arguably." He sighs. "Well argued, too. Justice versus the letter of the law, that kinda philosophical stuff. Out in the field, none of it turns out to mean a goddamn thing."  
  
He shakes his head, draws himself back to the moment, looks distant for just a split second or two. When he looks up again, there's a quiet knife-edge to his smile.

"Enough of that," he says, reaches out for the barest moment to squeeze Richard's wrist through his sleeve. "So, what've you been up to, Doctor? Saving lives?"

*

"Gerard," Sam says, and Richard wonders when he got so used to hearing that greeting.  
  
"Important research, Sam. What are your thoughts on cotton candy?"  
  
"Sticky," Sam says.  
  
"...and?"  
  
Richard can almost hear him grinning down the line. "And kinda nice, sometimes. What did you have in mind?"  
  
He has a little kiosk near County in mind; he's attending a conference there all week, and he's had his eye on it a whole two days. Sam humours him and turns up at lunchtime; apparently it's a slow day for him, too.  
  
"You're a sight for sore eyes," Richard tells him, and he bursts out laughing.  
  
"The hell've you been lookin' at all day?" he says. "Buncha blood vessels?"  
  
"Buncha people who don't wear a suit jacket as well as you."  
  
He's still laughing. "I'm flattered, Richard, holy shit. Your life must be fun."  
  
"Academia's important, Sam, it's human progress, but it can be _dull_  - "  
  
"And so cotton candy?"  
  
"And so cotton candy."  
  
"Thanks for thinkin' of me," Sam says.  
  
"Who the hell else?" Richard asks him, smiling in the sunshine, and thinks - well, really, who the hell else?

*

It's eleven at night, and Sam doesn't answer his home phone. Normally Richard would leave a message, seeing as it's so much later than usual; tonight, he stares at the pitch-black sky, the beginnings of snow, and calls him at the office.  
  
"Gerard," he says at once, all breath and no flame.  
  
"Hey, you still at work? You leaving anytime soon? How about dinner - I know a place."  
  
"Sure," he says, "but I can't drive."  
  
"Oh? Okay, no sweat, I'll come and pick you up - hang tight."  
  
Sam gives him the address, and emerges from the building as he draws up outside. He looks almost buried in his suit jacket, no topcoat, which makes more sense as he approaches; his left arm is outside the sleeve, in a sling.  
  
"I'm a little medicated," he confesses, fumbling with the seatbelt one-handed; Richard reaches out to help. "Thanks."  
  
"All right," Richard says, "spit it out, Sam. What happened?"  
  
"Shoulder," Sam says. "Took a fall, dislocated it. 'S all set, not as bad as it looks."  
  
" - okay, why were you still at work? Should you have been at work at all?"  
  
He sighs. "Things to finish up. One of the chiefs decided to fly in, had to make sure no one spit too much fire at her."  
  
Richard only feels a little guilty for smiling. "I'm not sure I had you down as someone who  _puts out_  fires."  
  
Sam rolls his eyes a bit, but bites back a tired smile of his own. "Sometimes you gotta know how to start one in order to know how to prevent one."  
  
"You should've come to Memorial," Richard tells him, patting him genially on the arm. "I'd have fixed you right up. I mean, though you do seem sufficiently fixed - "  
  
"You weren't there," Sam says quietly.  
  
Richard blinks. "I - what?"  
  
"It was three in the morning," he explains, voice as exhausted as his eyes. "You'd gone home - not your shift. Not exactly your field of medicine, either."  
  
"But you did ask for me," says Richard softly.  
  
"I did," he says, and drops his gaze.  
  
The restaurant Richard's chosen is a good few miles away, a place he's loved since his college days for its quiet and genuine warmth, and they find a table just as the clock strikes twelve.  
  
"Happy birthday," says Sam quietly, raising his glass of water as the last chime fades.  
  
Richard is numb for a moment. "How'd you know?"  
  
"I read your file," Sam says. "A little way off Barkley Dam, close on a year ago."  
  
Richard stares mutely at him, and breathes.  
  
"I got you something," he adds, brings something small out of his pocket and offers it over.  
  
Richard finds his voice, strangled though it is. "Sam, you shouldn't have."  
  
"Of course I should've," Sam says, almost flinty, almost fierce, that same lick of warmth still soft in his eyes. "There's a whole fuckton of things you could say that to me about, and the answer to all of them is yes, I should've."  
  
It's a lapel pin, small and elegant, blue-green and brushed steel, and Richard spins it under the light; wonders how he ever got this lucky when all he'd wanted on the day of his retrial was not to have to spend the evening alone. "It's beautiful, Sam. Thank you. - Guess I gotta wear it, huh?"  
  
" - oh,  _not_  with that jacket, Richard, it's corduroy."  
  
Richard stops trying to pin it to his collar and looks up to meet Sam's sudden exasperated grin.  
  
"I mean," he says, amusement winning over the diffidence in his eyes, "I'm not one to judge, but."  
  
"No," Richard says, the word a realization. "No, Sam, you  _definitely are._  Besides, you're surprisingly coherent for someone who claims to be stoned. Please judge, I need a laugh."  
  
"Okay, I never claimed to be stoned." Sam's already chuckling, himself. "But if you insist, let's start with the jacket."

*

The snow lets up in a while, most of the other tables gradually clearing, and even when the conversation fades, it's the most content Richard's been in years. It is near closing time, though - again - and he figures they should probably leave.  
  
"You hurting?" he asks Sam, who's looking out the window with his arms gently crossed on the table.  
  
"Not yet," Sam says, which is the most Sam answer he's ever heard.  
  
"You in a hurry to get home?"  
  
"Never with you."  
  
Richard pats his shoulder and grins.  
  
"Wanna go do something else?"  
  
"Hey, it's your birthday, you get to decide."  
  
"Okay," Richard says, deciding, and helping Sam on with his jacket and scarf - still, yes, a bright red scarf. "There's a bookstore, or there was, across town - it used to be open twenty-four hours; don't know if that's true any more. Let's find out? And then I can drive you back home. Or somethin'."  
  
"You're the boss, Dr Kimble," Sam says, fixing his collar, and smiles. "If only for tonight. Lead the way. Or somethin'."


End file.
